Christian Science

Christian Science is a new religious movement which was founded in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddy. Eddy experienced a miraculous healing from a serious injury, leading to her writing Science and Health in 1875; she believed that sickness was an illusion that could be corrected by prayer alone. The Bible and Science and Health are the movement's sacred texts, as it originated from mainstream Protestant Christianity, while they also publish the Christian Science Monitor newspaper. The religion believes in the sacred and omnipotent God, but they differ from traditional Christianity in that they believe that only the mind and the spirit are real. Humans are considered to be perfect spirits, and their lives and sicknesses are held to be illusions; through prayer, they can achieve full spirituality and oneness with God. By 2008, it had 100,000 adherents worldwide.